“Citizens Against Government Waste is Washington's leading opponent of pork-barrel spending.”- Washington Post

Citizens Against Government Waste Praises President Trump’s “Taxpayer First Budget”

For Immediate Release

Contact: Curtis Kalin 202-467-5318

May 23, 2017

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), America’s largest taxpayer watchdog group, today applauded the release of President Donald Trump’s fiscal year (FY) 2018 budget. The proposal represents the most fiscally conservative vision that the United States has seen in a generation.

Most notably, the president’s budget is the first such proposal from the White House in more than a decade that would balance within 10 years. To accomplish this worthy goal, the budget calls for the elimination of numerous programs that have been identified by CAGW as wasteful for years in Prime Cuts and the Congressional Pig Book, substantially reduces spending on dozens more programs, and implements commonsense reforms to welfare programs that CAGW has long identified as having prodigious amounts of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.

The budget’s renewed focus on cutting the number of improper payments in half over 10 years is also a significant priority. In FY 2016, government-wide improper payments rose to $144.3 billion. The Earned Income Tax Credit had an improper payment rate of 24 percent in FY 2016, which is among the highest of any program in the federal government, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program does not even measure the amount of overpayments.

The Trump budget also continues an aggressive campaign to roll back federal regulations, which will increase economic growth, save taxpayer dollars, and increase the flexibility of states and local communities to produce policies that work for them. To date, the Trump administration has generated potential annual savings of $1.2 billion by repealing destructive Obama-era regulations. In taking these steps, President Trump is pushing back on the toxic Washington conventional wisdom that only Beltway bureaucrats hold the answers to every problem facing the nation.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said in a statement: “President Trump should be commended for putting the interests of taxpayers at the center of the budget debate. It is refreshing to read a White House budget that balances within 10 years, eliminates or cuts dozens of wasteful programs, and outfits countless more with stringent new safeguards.”

CAGW is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.